I agree with most of this, and implemented most of these directives into my Mausritter campaign as a natural extension of the game's mechanics. It's manifestly true that OSR play works better than conventional play, and OSR content creators should be making that argument, instead of trying to "have their cake and eat it too" by pretending the tools, rules, and environments they design can be used in either type of play.
However, I disagree on the 1:1 timekeeping thing. Timekeeping with a calendar is essential, but you only need to peg it to real world time if and when players are opposed to one another. If all your players are willing to cooperate on some level, then giving players the latitude to burn days or months on schemes opens up as much player freedom as curtailing hostilities closes off.
Making players create characters who can cooperate on a per-session basis allows characters to split up in-session without necessitating that players split up into rival play sessions. If Xanthir and Ogrilon come to blows and part ways, then Mike creates a character that can cooperate with Xanthir and Dave creates a character that can cooperate with Ogrilon, and we now have 2 parties of characters while keeping one party of players.
At my open table, time can move forward to any extent during sessions. PCs who aren't participating are bivouacked in town where they're safe, because every session ends with an automated retreat to a settlement. There are no downtime rules. If players pass a month in-session, a month passes for everyone.
Mausritter has a robust factions system, and that system keeps time pressure on PCs who care about it, and takes that pressure off of PCs who don't. NPC factions get 1 turn per session and 1 turn per month, so time-killing will move events forward without the player's input. 1 day also occurs between sessions, to give NPC factions time to execute a turn.
Opening up time as an axis of movement for players opens up options for the DM and for the players. If players want to spend a month draining a flooded cavern with teams of workmen, they can do so trivially. If I want to create a trap that sucks the party into a pocket dimension for a month, I can do so without interrupting the session. In my experience, it can take a little finagling to get players to understand the power of waiting around or running "automated" behaviors, but once they get it, it's a lot more valuable than the conflict that real-time timekeeping would enable by ensuring that no one party could steal a march on another mid-session. With only 10 players in my player pool, none have ever expressed any interest in competing with one another anyway.
With multiple DMs or competing parties of players real-world timekeeping would certainly be essential, but I don't see it as a pillar of OSR play, so much as rigid and self-consistent timekeeping is.
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate that you took the time to capture examples and make relevant comparisons.
I should explicitly state that this article is not an endorsement of OSR, except perhaps incidentally. What is summarized as "BROSR play" is a strict set of interdependent play patterns, the successful combination of which results in a unique form of play. Without each of these pieces held in place, the pattern falls apart. It has been my observation that -most- OSR groups use several pieces but -none- of them use all of the pieces. There is nothing, in principal, preventing OSR tables from adopting the full structure described here. That is the main practical reason to distinguish between OSR (which describes a broad philosophy) and BROSR (which describes a methodology).
It is clear that you understand the role and importance of strict timekeeping for a meaningful campaign. However, your remarks suggest a potential misunderstanding about 1:1 time which I will briefly address, just in case.
During the session, players can utilize as much time as they please. We could have a session where 1 in-game hour passed or 2 in-game months passed. At the end of the session, when we reflect on the events that took place, we view them as having taken place -in the future-. In other words, the session consists of players mining into the future. They can mine very far ahead sometimes, creating campaign canon that constrains upcoming sessions (until the real-world date reaches the constraining events date, naturally).
Even though 1:1 time is not -strictly- necessary (for example, we could use 1:7 or 1:30) to achieve the precise category of campaign BROSR aims for, it is the single best pedagogical tool for revealing the assumptions of conventional play to players versed in it; thus, we strongly recommend it.
If a campaign grows very large, timekeeping techniques that do not have a fixed rate of passage will ultimately reduce to 1:1. If our campaign has 3 players, they can all "agree" to timeskip 5 months and just carry on from there. But with 60 players, we will never achieve that "vote" because at least one of them will be placed in a disadvantage by being saddled with 3 months of downtime to resolve, rather than having their plots proceed -at pace- with a fixed, reliable downtime method.
Thanks again for your comment. I am not yet familiar with Mausritter, but I like the sound of the campaign elements you mentioned.
An explanation of BROSR ideas *without* a single wrestling gif or muppet reference?
A well wrought article with plenty of citation. As complete a definition of "conventional play" as I have seen and though I've used all the ideas here before in my own games I will surely be returning here to study and refresh my understandings as I prepare for my next campaign.
An interesting read. I would love to see more development around game completeness. Particularly in how a particular game can reach it.
The problem is genre. Of complete games, as described here, there's only two flavors of sword & sorcery and a particular flavor of science fiction. But obviously, that's not the full breadth of game genres people want to play.
This is a distinct advantage of rules-light games (such as B/X or shadowdark). They lack rule completeness needed to maintain a complete campaign but the amount of work to a serviceable game of a particular flavor is minimal. That is, after all, the point.
I wonder if something could be derived from a precedence system as described in ACKS II. But that's a pretty large risk on the diagetic intent. Half-hazard rules are not always very good rules. It's an interesting conundrum. Of course, talented developers could always design a game from the ground up. That seems like a really high bar though.
Great points. It's clear you can also sense what is going on.
I don't have all the answers (yet), but all the arrows are lining up in one direction. Consider two of the mentioned points:
1) A game's "completeness:" it's not about how many rules it has or how many situations it covers. Rather, it's about the rules acknowledging and presuming that the gameworld is a complete Second World.
2) Rules-light advantage: In principal, there is nothing wrong with rules-light games (they are easier to play RAW, after all). But the SPECIFIC VARIETY of rules-light games available to us are light NOT because of incredible big-brain hyper-efficiency in their design BUT because they are rat-maze games where it is presumed the players will politely stay in the maze. Typically these are "adventure" games, where we're supposed to delve dungeons. If we muster large forces and try to take over kingdoms, we quickly find ourselves in need of ACKS or AD&D because the rules-light "adventure" game treats that idea as implicitly ridiculous.
We can see that these two points are actually one, for example. "Don't trap players in a rat maze," and "Maintain space and leave implicit assumptions for the Second World to behave in a natural way," end up being the same goal line approached from two different directions. With the right approach, these objectives (and their necessary support) could be achieved with any genre and/or theming, with the particular mechanical styling forming the character & feel of the game.
For my part, I envision a bright future with NEW games that are more than mere "adventure" games! I am trying to create, from first principles, a true contender TTRPG that can stand up to the greats and sustain a real campaign. It is indeed a difficult task, and maybe why everyone has been so forgiving for it taking so long. You can see a bit about it here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/a-bmd-catalogue ).
Hmm. So game completeness isn't so much "How can the rules account for any given situation?" It's more "with how much fit can the rules be used to model every relevant actor in the campaign?"
That's very interesting and I think it's worth pursuing the limits of that.
What a sloppy directionless piece of writing. I categorically refuse the label of conventional play, and your definition is a definition only in your mind. Yes there are decidedly inane games ran by people copying what they see on YouTube but that does not define the common table.
There exists an vast multitude of playstyles across differing communities and time periods, but that does not mean that the definition of "conventional play" described here is not descriptive of a vast portion of the TTRPG community. Perhaps it does not describe your games but it does describe many.
I agree with most of this, and implemented most of these directives into my Mausritter campaign as a natural extension of the game's mechanics. It's manifestly true that OSR play works better than conventional play, and OSR content creators should be making that argument, instead of trying to "have their cake and eat it too" by pretending the tools, rules, and environments they design can be used in either type of play.
However, I disagree on the 1:1 timekeeping thing. Timekeeping with a calendar is essential, but you only need to peg it to real world time if and when players are opposed to one another. If all your players are willing to cooperate on some level, then giving players the latitude to burn days or months on schemes opens up as much player freedom as curtailing hostilities closes off.
Making players create characters who can cooperate on a per-session basis allows characters to split up in-session without necessitating that players split up into rival play sessions. If Xanthir and Ogrilon come to blows and part ways, then Mike creates a character that can cooperate with Xanthir and Dave creates a character that can cooperate with Ogrilon, and we now have 2 parties of characters while keeping one party of players.
At my open table, time can move forward to any extent during sessions. PCs who aren't participating are bivouacked in town where they're safe, because every session ends with an automated retreat to a settlement. There are no downtime rules. If players pass a month in-session, a month passes for everyone.
Mausritter has a robust factions system, and that system keeps time pressure on PCs who care about it, and takes that pressure off of PCs who don't. NPC factions get 1 turn per session and 1 turn per month, so time-killing will move events forward without the player's input. 1 day also occurs between sessions, to give NPC factions time to execute a turn.
Opening up time as an axis of movement for players opens up options for the DM and for the players. If players want to spend a month draining a flooded cavern with teams of workmen, they can do so trivially. If I want to create a trap that sucks the party into a pocket dimension for a month, I can do so without interrupting the session. In my experience, it can take a little finagling to get players to understand the power of waiting around or running "automated" behaviors, but once they get it, it's a lot more valuable than the conflict that real-time timekeeping would enable by ensuring that no one party could steal a march on another mid-session. With only 10 players in my player pool, none have ever expressed any interest in competing with one another anyway.
With multiple DMs or competing parties of players real-world timekeeping would certainly be essential, but I don't see it as a pillar of OSR play, so much as rigid and self-consistent timekeeping is.
Thank you for your comment. I appreciate that you took the time to capture examples and make relevant comparisons.
I should explicitly state that this article is not an endorsement of OSR, except perhaps incidentally. What is summarized as "BROSR play" is a strict set of interdependent play patterns, the successful combination of which results in a unique form of play. Without each of these pieces held in place, the pattern falls apart. It has been my observation that -most- OSR groups use several pieces but -none- of them use all of the pieces. There is nothing, in principal, preventing OSR tables from adopting the full structure described here. That is the main practical reason to distinguish between OSR (which describes a broad philosophy) and BROSR (which describes a methodology).
It is clear that you understand the role and importance of strict timekeeping for a meaningful campaign. However, your remarks suggest a potential misunderstanding about 1:1 time which I will briefly address, just in case.
During the session, players can utilize as much time as they please. We could have a session where 1 in-game hour passed or 2 in-game months passed. At the end of the session, when we reflect on the events that took place, we view them as having taken place -in the future-. In other words, the session consists of players mining into the future. They can mine very far ahead sometimes, creating campaign canon that constrains upcoming sessions (until the real-world date reaches the constraining events date, naturally).
There is an extensive writeup about the mechanics and meaning and interpretations of 1:1 time, avoiding the typical minefield of semantic confusions, here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/timekeeping-in-ttrpgs-part-1 ) and here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/timekeeping-in-ttrpgs-part-2 ), if that interests you.
Even though 1:1 time is not -strictly- necessary (for example, we could use 1:7 or 1:30) to achieve the precise category of campaign BROSR aims for, it is the single best pedagogical tool for revealing the assumptions of conventional play to players versed in it; thus, we strongly recommend it.
If a campaign grows very large, timekeeping techniques that do not have a fixed rate of passage will ultimately reduce to 1:1. If our campaign has 3 players, they can all "agree" to timeskip 5 months and just carry on from there. But with 60 players, we will never achieve that "vote" because at least one of them will be placed in a disadvantage by being saddled with 3 months of downtime to resolve, rather than having their plots proceed -at pace- with a fixed, reliable downtime method.
Thanks again for your comment. I am not yet familiar with Mausritter, but I like the sound of the campaign elements you mentioned.
An explanation of BROSR ideas *without* a single wrestling gif or muppet reference?
A well wrought article with plenty of citation. As complete a definition of "conventional play" as I have seen and though I've used all the ideas here before in my own games I will surely be returning here to study and refresh my understandings as I prepare for my next campaign.
Looking forward to BMD as ever. Excellent post.
An interesting read. I would love to see more development around game completeness. Particularly in how a particular game can reach it.
The problem is genre. Of complete games, as described here, there's only two flavors of sword & sorcery and a particular flavor of science fiction. But obviously, that's not the full breadth of game genres people want to play.
This is a distinct advantage of rules-light games (such as B/X or shadowdark). They lack rule completeness needed to maintain a complete campaign but the amount of work to a serviceable game of a particular flavor is minimal. That is, after all, the point.
I wonder if something could be derived from a precedence system as described in ACKS II. But that's a pretty large risk on the diagetic intent. Half-hazard rules are not always very good rules. It's an interesting conundrum. Of course, talented developers could always design a game from the ground up. That seems like a really high bar though.
Great points. It's clear you can also sense what is going on.
I don't have all the answers (yet), but all the arrows are lining up in one direction. Consider two of the mentioned points:
1) A game's "completeness:" it's not about how many rules it has or how many situations it covers. Rather, it's about the rules acknowledging and presuming that the gameworld is a complete Second World.
2) Rules-light advantage: In principal, there is nothing wrong with rules-light games (they are easier to play RAW, after all). But the SPECIFIC VARIETY of rules-light games available to us are light NOT because of incredible big-brain hyper-efficiency in their design BUT because they are rat-maze games where it is presumed the players will politely stay in the maze. Typically these are "adventure" games, where we're supposed to delve dungeons. If we muster large forces and try to take over kingdoms, we quickly find ourselves in need of ACKS or AD&D because the rules-light "adventure" game treats that idea as implicitly ridiculous.
We can see that these two points are actually one, for example. "Don't trap players in a rat maze," and "Maintain space and leave implicit assumptions for the Second World to behave in a natural way," end up being the same goal line approached from two different directions. With the right approach, these objectives (and their necessary support) could be achieved with any genre and/or theming, with the particular mechanical styling forming the character & feel of the game.
For my part, I envision a bright future with NEW games that are more than mere "adventure" games! I am trying to create, from first principles, a true contender TTRPG that can stand up to the greats and sustain a real campaign. It is indeed a difficult task, and maybe why everyone has been so forgiving for it taking so long. You can see a bit about it here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/a-bmd-catalogue ).
Thank you for the excellent comment.
Hmm. So game completeness isn't so much "How can the rules account for any given situation?" It's more "with how much fit can the rules be used to model every relevant actor in the campaign?"
That's very interesting and I think it's worth pursuing the limits of that.
What a sloppy directionless piece of writing. I categorically refuse the label of conventional play, and your definition is a definition only in your mind. Yes there are decidedly inane games ran by people copying what they see on YouTube but that does not define the common table.
There exists an vast multitude of playstyles across differing communities and time periods, but that does not mean that the definition of "conventional play" described here is not descriptive of a vast portion of the TTRPG community. Perhaps it does not describe your games but it does describe many.
Yeah it isn’t descriptive of a vast portion though.
Exquisite. Truly.